


Late Spring

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance, Wammy's Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-28
Updated: 2008-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mello lays on his back in the field behind the orphanage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Spring

**Author's Note:**

> This popped into my head after reading _Dubliners_ by James Joyce, well, specifically, the story "The Encounter". I fell a little bit in love with his style of writing, I suppose. /:3;

> _Every boy, he said, has a little sweetheart._  
> ~ James Joyce, "The Encounter".

Late spring curled in lazy circles around the open field behind the orphanage. It was a proper field, square, and boxed in with tall pines as green as spinach, but large enough so as to not leave you feeling claustrophobic. Indeed, if you laid on your back at its very centre, the sky above would grow so large and empty that you’d start to think the entirety of the planet had been swallowed up by it, leaving nothing but yourself and a warm pool of crayola blue, as if the very air itself were coloured the way that children draw it, hovering in imperfect strokes just above a flat horizon. On the other hand, if you closed your eyes there was still the sun’s yellow-pink against the fine skin of your eyelids, but its significance waned somehow, and the central sensation became the feel of the grass twitching at the naked skin of your legs and arms, and the soft hush-hush-hum that the stalks made against your hair and your ears.

The field was a universe contracted into a sphere of blue-green warmth, or perhaps the world expanded into a moment, Mello wasn’t sure, but he knew that even he could not chain himself to a desk and a pile of textbooks on a day like this. He sunk his head back onto the sweet-smelling grass and parted his lips to breathe in the colours of it all, this outside-universe; sank into it deep, and sank amongst the tendrils of gold creeping inside his mind. He barely so much as shifted, unsurprised, as likewise open lips touched upon his mouth. They were warm and soft, and speaking words that he could have translated from the invisible to the literal had he chose to, but he didn’t, because sometimes he knew that thinking was criminal. Instead he just opened his mouth further to the taste of it, the scent of it, the flavours of sky and grass and warm milk, and the boy kissing him, the boy whose hand rested at the centre of Mello’s chest, pushing gently down at his breastbone as though he sought to leave an imprint, as though he yearned to mark his possession for the whole blue eternity.

In the lazy circles of late spring even Mello could face the concept of possession with wide-open eyes and so he did, blinking up into somehow-brightness of clear dark eyes, coloured strangely almost to amber in the sunshine. He could take it, take it all, because _first _only mattered when you were on opposing sides, and the bobbing faces of the dandelions negated all sense of that. Near's touch was close (near?) and distant, immediate and left with a pause like a transmission from afar, and Mello almost fancied that the words breathed into his skin by Near's lips, smoothed across his face, could be tuned with the ease of an old wireless.

_Did I wake you? _Near asked, suddenly speaking English instead of the language of light fingertips and feathered lips, and making Mello blink, dragging the form of pines beyond the tilt of Near's right shoulder into shadowed focus.

The very air shifted lethargically.

_No,_ said Mello. _I was only dreaming._

Near’s fingers traced circles on Mello's skin. _Are you still dreaming?_ He asked, toes bare and small, and pressing sideways against the fine blonde hairs below Mello’s knees.

_I might be,_ Mello acknowledged, warm and content, and letting Near curl in tighter against him, memorising the push of soft skin and pale limbs. Heartbeat once, heartbeat twice, and the clouds swayed above them until he took hold of the boy at the waist and rolled them both over, enjoying the way Near squirmed. Hovering over the younger boy he paused there, picking strands of grass from his elbows and inspecting the curious lines of red-and-white imprints the stalks had left upon his arms, listening to the wind breathe against him, before finally allowing Near's small hands to reel him back in close again.

To the north and the west and the east and the south, late spring curled around them in lazy circles, and the sky was as blue as Dutch china patterns, and the grass recited stanzas in French and Latin, and the field shrank and grew into a universe of two alone;

and there was no such thing as second place.


End file.
